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PARAMOUNT CHANNEL : CARY GRANT

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Cary Grant (born Archibald Alexander Leach; January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986) was an English stage and Hollywood film actor who became an American citizen in 1942. Known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor and “dashing good looks”, Grant is considered one of classic Hollywood‘s definitive leading men.

His mother had suffered from clinical depression since the death of a previous child. Her husband placed her in a mental institution and told his 9-year-old son only that she had gone away on a “long holiday”. Believing she was dead, Leach did not learn otherwise until he was 31 and discovered her alive in a care facility. When Leach was 10, his father abandoned him after remarrying and having a baby with his new young wife.

Leach was expelled from the Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol in 1918. After joining the “Bob Pender Stage Troupe”, Leach performed as a stilt walker and traveled with the group to the United States in 1920 at the age of 16 on the RMS Olympic, on a two-year tour of the country. He was processed at Ellis Island on July 28, 1920.

When the troupe returned to the UK, he decided to stay in the U.S. and continue his stage career. During this time, he became a part of thevaudeville world and toured with Parker, Rand, and Leach.

Still using his birth name, he performed on the stage at The Muny in St. Louis,Missouri, in such shows as Irene (1931), Music in May (1931), Nina Rosa (1931), Rio Rita (1931), Street Singer (1931), The Three Musketeers (1931), and Wonderful Night (1931). Leach’s experience on stage as a stilt walker, acrobat, juggler, and mime taught him “phenomenal physical grace and exquisite comic timing” and the value of teamwork, skills which would benefit him in Hollywood.

Leach became a naturalized United States citizen on June 26, 1942, at which time he also legally changed his name from “Archibald Alexander Leach” to “Cary Grant”.

After appearing in several musicals on Broadway under the name Archie Leach, Leach went to Hollywood in 1931. When told to change his name, he proposed “Cary Lockwood”, the name of the character he had played in the Broadway show Nikki, based upon the recent film The Last Flight.

He signed with Paramount Pictures, where studio bosses decided that the name “Cary” was acceptable but that “Lockwood” was too similar to another actor’s surname. Paramount gave their new actor a list of surnames to choose from, and he selected “Grant” because the initials C and G had already proved lucky for Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, two of Hollywood’s biggest film stars.

I’m No Angel was a tremendous financial success and, along with She Done Him Wrong, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, saved Paramount from bankruptcy. Paramount put Grant in a series of unsuccessful films until 1936, when he signed with Columbia Pictures. His first major comedy hit was when he was loaned to Hal Roach‘s studio for the 1937 Topper (which was distributed by MGM).

The Awful Truth (1937) was a pivotal film in Grant’s career, establishing for him a screen persona as a sophisticated light comedy leading man. As Grant later wrote, “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.” Grant is said to have based his characterization in The Awful Truth on the mannerisms and intonations of the film’s director, Leo McCarey, whom he resembled physically. As writer/director Peter Bogdanovich noted, “After The Awful Truth, when it came to light comedy, there was Cary Grant and then everyone else was an also-ran.”

Grant remained one of Hollywood’s top box-office attractions for almost 30 years. Howard Hawks said that Grant was “so far the best that there isn’t anybody to be compared to him”.[15]David Thomson called him “the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema“.

Grant was a favorite of Hitchcock, who called him “the only actor I ever loved in my whole life”.

Paul Newman was cast instead, oppositeJulie Andrews. Producers Broccoli and Saltzman originally sought Cary Grant for the role of James Bond in Dr. No but discarded the idea as Grant would be committed to only one feature film and the producers decided to go after someone who could be part of a franchise.

Grant was the first actor to “go independent” by not renewing his studio contract, effectively leaving the studio system, which almost completely controlled what an actor could or could not do. In this way, Grant was able to control every aspect of his career, at the risk of not working because no particular studio had an interest in his career long term.

He decided which films he was going to appear in, often had personal choice of directors and co-stars, and at times even negotiated a share of the gross revenue, something uncommon at the time. Grant received more than $700,000 for his 10% of the gross for To Catch a Thief while Hitchcock received less than $50,000 for directing and producing it.

Grant poked fun at himself with statements such as “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant—even I want to be Cary Grant”, and in ad-lib lines—such as in the film His Girl Friday, saying, “I never had so much fun since Archie Leach died”. In Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), a gravestone is seen bearing the name Archie Leach. According to a famous story now believed to be apocryphal, after seeing a telegram from a magazine editor to his agent asking “How old Cary Grant?” Grant reportedly responded with “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?

Cary Grant retired from the screen at 62 when his daughter Jennifer was born, in order to focus on bringing her up and to provide a sense of permanency and stability in her life.

While bringing up his daughter, he archived artifacts of her childhood and adolescence in a bank-quality room-sized vault he had installed in the house.

His daughter attributed this meticulous collection to the fact that artifacts of his own childhood had been destroyed during the Luftwaffe’s bombing of Bristol in the Second World War (an event that also claimed the lives of his uncle, aunt, and cousin as well as the cousin’s husband and grandson), and he may have wanted to prevent her from experiencing a similar loss.

Although Grant had retired from the screen, he remained active.

CARY GRANT – MARTIN LANDAU

In the late 1960s, he accepted a position on the board of directors at Fabergé. By all accounts this position was not honorary, as some had assumed; Grant regularly attended meetings and his mere appearance at a product launch would almost certainly guarantee its success. The position also permitted use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother, Dyan Cannon, was working.

He later joined the boards of Hollywood Park, the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle, Hollywood, California), Western Airlines (now Delta Air Lines), andMGM.

He was a keen motoring enthusiast and, like many other Hollywood stars of the era, owned many notable cars. One of the first he owned was a 1929 Cadillac Cabriolet. His love of Cadillacs never waned and he later purchased a Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. Other cars that he owned included an MG Magnette and a Sunbeam Alpine series one roadster.

In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the United States in a one-man show, A Conversation with Cary Grant, in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. Grant was preparing for a performance at the Adler Theatre in Davenport, Iowa, on the afternoon of November 29, 1986, when he sustained a cerebral hemorrhage (he had previously suffered a stroke in October 1984). His wife did not know what was going on and she went to a local pharmacy to get aspirin. He died at 11:22 p.m. in St. Luke’s Hospital at the age of 82.

The bulk of his estate, worth millions of dollars, went to his fifth wife, Barbara Harris, and his daughter, Jennifer Grant

In 2001, a statue of Grant was erected in Millennium Square, a regenerated area next to Bristol Harbour in his city of birth, Bristol.

In November 2005, Grant came in first in the “The 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time” list by Premiere magazine. Richard Schickel, the film critic, said about Grant: “He’s the best star actor there ever was in the movies.

Marion Lorne (August 12, 1883 – May 9, 1968) was an American actress of stage, film, and television.After a career in theatre in New York and London, Lorne made her first film in 1951, and for the remainder of her life, played small roles in films and television.

Her recurring role, between 1964 and her death in 1968, as Aunt Clara in the comedy series, Bewitched (1964–1972) brought her widespread recognition, and for which she was posthumously awarded an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

She was born Marion Lorne MacDougall in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, a small mining town halfway between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, of Scottish and English immigrant parents. While her year of birth is listed as 1885 on her tombstone, it was usually listed as 1888 when she was alive and the Social Security Death Index lists it as 1883. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.

Career Lorne debuted on Broadway in 1905; she also acted in London theaters, enjoying a flourishing stage career on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

In London she had her own theater, the Whitehall, where she had top billing in plays written by Walter Hackett, her husband. None of her productions at the Whitehall had runs shorter than 125 nights.

After appearing in a couple of Vitaphone shorts, including Success (1931) starring Jack Haley, she made her feature film debut in her late 60s in Strangers on a Train (1951), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

The role was typical of the befuddled, nervous, and somewhat aristocratic matrons that she usually portrayed.

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From 1952-55, Lorne was seen as perpetually confused junior high school English teacher Mrs. Gurney on Mr. Peepers. From 1957–58, she co-starred with Joan Caulfield in the NBC sitcom Sally in the role of an elderly widow who happens to be the co-owner of a department store. Although afraid of live television, declaring “I’m a coward when it comes to a live [television] show”, she was persuaded to appear a few times to promote the film The Girl Rush with Rosalind Russell in the mid-1950s.

Between 1958–64, she made regular appearances on The Garry Moore Show (1958–64).Her last role, as Aunt Clara in Bewitched, brought Lorne her widest fame as a lovable, forgetful witch who is losing her powers due to old age and whose spells usually end in disaster. Aunt Clara is obsessed with doorknobs, often bringing her collection with her on visits.

Lorne had an extensive collection of doorknobs in real life, some of which she used as props in the series.[8]DeathShe appeared in twenty-seven episodes of Bewitched, and was not replaced after she died of a heart attack in her Manhattan apartment, just prior to the start of production of the show’s fifth season, at the age of 84 on May 9, 1968.Lorne is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Greenburgh, New York.

PosthumousThe producers of Bewitched recognized that Lorne’s performance as Aunt Clara could not be replicated by another actress. Comedic actress Alice Ghostley was recruited to fill the gap as “Esmeralda”, a different type of befuddled witch with wobbly magic whose spells often went astray.

Coincidentally, Lorne and Ghostley had appeared side-by-side as partygoers in the iconic comedy-drama film The Graduate , made the year before Lorne’s death. She received a posthumous Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on Bewitched.The statue was accepted by Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery.Personal lifeShe was married to playwright Walter Hackett, who died in 1944.WIKIPEDIA SOURCES Personal lifeShe was married to playwright Walter Hackett, who died in 1944.

Artemios “Demis” Ventouris Roussos (June 15, 1946 – January 25, 2015)

Demis was a GREEK SINGER and performer who had international hit records as a solo performer in the 1970s after having been a member of Aphrodite’s Child , a progressive rock group that also included Vangelis. He has sold over 60 million albums worldwide.

Roussos was born and raised in Alexandira Egypt , in a family where his father George (engineer Yorgos Roussos) was Greek and mother Nelly MAZLOUM was Egyptian of Italian origin. His parents lost their possessions during the Suez Crisis and consequently decided to move to greece

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After settling in Greece, Roussos participated in a series of musical groups beginning with The Idols when he was 17, where he met Evangelos Papathanassiou (later known as VANGELIS ) and Loukas Sideras, his future bandmates in of Aphrodite’s Child . After this he joined We Five (not the San Francisco, California folk-rock group), another cover band which had limited success in Greece.

Roussos came to a wider audience in 1967 when he joined progressive rock band of Aphrodite’s Child , with Vangelis and Sideras, initially as a singer but later also playing bass guitar, achieving commercial success in France and other parts of Europe from 1968 to 1972.

They set off for London to break into the international music scene but as a result of bad weather, the plane landed them in Paris – and they decided to stay there signing a record deal with Philips S.A. His operatic vocal style helped propel the band to international success, notably on their final album 666 , which became a progressive rock cult classic.

After Aphrodite’s Child disbanded, Roussos continued to record sporadically with former bandmate Vangelis

In 1970 the two released Sex Power (although the album has also been disputably credited to Aphrodite’s Child), also recording the 1977 album Magic together. Their most successful collaboration was “Race To The End” (also sung in Spanish as “Tu Libertad”), a vocal adaptation of the musical theme from the Oscar winning film Chariots of fire , while Roussos also guested on the soundtrack to Blade runner (1982), with a song entitled “Tales Of The Future”.

Roussos died early Sunday morning, January 25, 2015, while hospitalized at “Ygeia Hospital” in Athens, Greece. The news of his death where confirmed a day later by his friend and journalist Nikos Aliagas who tweeted, on January 25, 2015, in both Greek and French ]. The death of the famous artist has been confirmed later the same day by his daughter, who spoke in Greek and French media.

Roussos also began a solo career with the song “We Shall Dance” in 1971. Initially unsuccessful, he toured around Europe and became a leading artist. His solo career peaked in the mid 1970 with several hit albums. His single “Forever And Ever” topped the charts in several countries in 1973 (1976 in U.K.).

Other hits were “My Friend The Wind”, “My Reason”, “Velvet Mornings”, “Goodbye My Love, Goodbye”, “Someday Somewhere” and “Lovely Lady Of Arcadia”. His first UK single to chart was in 1975: “Happy To Be On An Island In The Sun” written by an Englishman David Lewis with the record reaching No. 5 in the charts.

His popularity in the rest of Europe, but not the UK, came to fascinate BBC-TV producer John King who made a documentary which he called ‘The Roussos Phenomenon’ in 1976. The programme was aired and Roussos’ scored a number one chart selling E.P. record of the same title and with three back catalogue albums entering the charts.

Roussos was mentioned in the television play Abigail’s Party (1977) and made one of his earliest appearances on English-speaking TV on the Basil Brush Show. Before appearing on the Basil Brush Show, he had appeared on the Nana Mouskouri TV show in the UK, singing a duet version of his hit single “Happy To Be On An Island In The Sun”.

In 1980, Roussos had a hit with a cover of Air Supply’s “Lost In Love”, sung as a duet with Florence Warner. His UK career was now being managed by ex-Phonogram promotion man, Don Percival.

He re-recorded his songs in a number of languages, including Japanese, whereas The Roussos Phenomenon EP was the first No.1 hit for an African-born artist in the history of the UK Singles Chart. He was equally successful across Europe and Latin America, although a gold disc for the LP Demis remains his only success in the United States.

For years Roussos struggled with his weight. In June 1980 he weighed 147 kg. He then began a diet in which he lost 50 kg in 10 months.

In 1982 he co-authored the book A Question Of Weight with his close friend Veronique Skawinska, in which he dealt candidly with his struggles with obesity. Roussos suffered a fallow period during the 1980s in terms of hits and his output dried up as he battled clinical depression.

In June 1985, he was amongst the hostages during the hijacking of TWA Flight 847.

In 1989, he recorded the song “Young Love”, a duet with German singer/songwriter Drafi Deutscher, which was released as a single in Germany and reached No.2 in the famous German music TV show ZDF Hitparade in October of the same year.

The 1990s saw even more substantial releases by Roussos. In 1993 he released Insight (also called Morning Has Broken) to general acclaim. After that he teamed up with BR Music in the Netherlands to produce Immortel, Serenade and In Holland, utilising a variety of ethnic and electronic styles..

Roussos continued to record and tour. The spring of 2002 saw him do a tour of England, whilst in recent years he has appeared in Russia and the United Arab Emirates. A committed follower of the Greek Orthodox faith, he has sung as a guest in a number of churches in Greece and worldwide.

In 2006, he released the acclaimed Live In Brasil, which documents his return to a country where his popularity led him to record “Você Você E Nada Mais” – a huge hit in Portuguese.

From 2006 to 2008, he was part of the Âge Tendre Et Têtes De Bois tour, a series of concerts featuring French singers from the sixties and seventies.

A comeback took place in 2009, with Roussos recording a new studio album produced by Marc di Domenico, released on May 11.

Marion Lorne (August 12, 1883 – May 9, 1968) was an American actress of stage, film, and television.After a career in theatre in New York and London, Lorne made her first film in 1951, and for the remainder of her life, played small roles in films and television.

Her recurring role, between 1964 and her death in 1968, as Aunt Clara in the comedy series, Bewitched (1964–1972) brought her widespread recognition, and for which she was posthumously awarded an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

She was born Marion Lorne MacDougall in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, a small mining town halfway between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, of Scottish and English immigrant parents. While her year of birth is listed as 1885 on her tombstone, it was usually listed as 1888 when she was alive and the Social Security Death Index lists it as 1883. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.

Career Lorne debuted on Broadway in 1905; she also acted in London theaters, enjoying a flourishing stage career on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

In London she had her own theater, the Whitehall, where she had top billing in plays written by Walter Hackett, her husband. None of her productions at the Whitehall had runs shorter than 125 nights.

After appearing in a couple of Vitaphone shorts, including Success (1931) starring Jack Haley, she made her feature film debut in her late 60s in Strangers on a Train (1951), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

The role was typical of the befuddled, nervous, and somewhat aristocratic matrons that she usually portrayed.

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From 1952-55, Lorne was seen as perpetually confused junior high school English teacher Mrs. Gurney on Mr. Peepers. From 1957–58, she co-starred with Joan Caulfield in the NBC sitcom Sally in the role of an elderly widow who happens to be the co-owner of a department store. Although afraid of live television, declaring “I’m a coward when it comes to a live [television] show”, she was persuaded to appear a few times to promote the film The Girl Rush with Rosalind Russell in the mid-1950s.

Between 1958–64, she made regular appearances on The Garry Moore Show (1958–64).Her last role, as Aunt Clara in Bewitched, brought Lorne her widest fame as a lovable, forgetful witch who is losing her powers due to old age and whose spells usually end in disaster. Aunt Clara is obsessed with doorknobs, often bringing her collection with her on visits.

Lorne had an extensive collection of doorknobs in real life, some of which she used as props in the series.[8]DeathShe appeared in twenty-seven episodes of Bewitched, and was not replaced after she died of a heart attack in her Manhattan apartment, just prior to the start of production of the show’s fifth season, at the age of 84 on May 9, 1968.Lorne is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Greenburgh, New York.

PosthumousThe producers of Bewitched recognized that Lorne’s performance as Aunt Clara could not be replicated by another actress. Comedic actress Alice Ghostley was recruited to fill the gap as “Esmeralda”, a different type of befuddled witch with wobbly magic whose spells often went astray.

Coincidentally, Lorne and Ghostley had appeared side-by-side as partygoers in the iconic comedy-drama film The Graduate , made the year before Lorne’s death. She received a posthumous Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on Bewitched.The statue was accepted by Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery.Personal lifeShe was married to playwright Walter Hackett, who died in 1944.WIKIPEDIA SOURCES Personal lifeShe was married to playwright Walter Hackett, who died in 1944.

Racetrack Playa is home to an enduring Death Valley mystery. Littered across the surface of this dry lake, also called a “playa,” are hundreds of rocks — some weighing as much as 320 kilograms (700 pounds) — that seem to have been dragged across the ground, leaving synchronized trails that can stretch for hundreds of meters.

What powerful force could be moving them? Researchers have investigated this question since the 1940s, but no one has seen the process in action — until now.

In a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE on Aug. 27, a team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, paleobiologist Richard Norris reports on first-hand observations of the phenomenon.

Because the stones can sit for a decade or more without moving, the researchers did not originally expect to see motion in person. Instead, they decided to monitor the rocks remotely by installing a high-resolution weather station capable of measuring gusts to one-second intervals and fitting 15 rocks with custom-built, motion-activated GPS units. (The National Park Service would not let them use native rocks, so they brought in similar rocks from an outside source.) The experiment was set up in winter 2011 with permission of the Park Service. Then — in what Ralph Lorenz of the Applied Physics Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University, one of the paper’s authors, suspected would be “the most boring experiment ever” — they waited for something to happen.

But in December 2013, Norris and co-author and cousin Jim Norris arrived in Death Valley to discover that the playa was covered with a pond of water seven centimeters (three inches) deep. Shortly after, the rocks began moving.

‘Element of luck’

“Science sometimes has an element of luck,” Richard Norris said. “We expected to wait five or 10 years without anything moving, but only two years into the project, we just happened to be there at the right time to see it happen in person.”

Their observations show that moving the rocks requires a rare combination of events. First, the playa fills with water, which must be deep enough to form floating ice during cold winter nights but shallow enough to expose the rocks. As nighttime temperatures plummet, the pond freezes to form thin sheets of “windowpane” ice, which must be thin enough to move freely but thick enough to maintain strength. On sunny days, the ice begins to melt and break up into large floating panels, which light winds drive across the playa, pushing rocks in front of them and leaving trails in the soft mud below the surface.

“On Dec. 21, 2013, ice breakup happened just around noon, with popping and cracking sounds coming from all over the frozen pond surface,” said Richard Norris. “I said to Jim, ‘This is it!’”

These observations upended previous theories that had proposed hurricane-force winds, dust devils, slick algal films, or thick sheets of ice as likely contributors to rock motion. Instead, rocks moved under light winds of about 3-5 meters per second (10 miles per hour) and were driven by ice less than 3-5 millimeters (0.25 inches) thick, a measure too thin to grip large rocks and lift them off the playa, which several papers had proposed as a mechanism to reduce friction. Further, the rocks moved only a few inches per second (2-6 meters per minute), a speed that is almost imperceptible at a distance and without stationary reference points.

“It’s possible that tourists have actually seen this happening without realizing it,” said Jim Norris of the engineering firm Interwoof in Santa Barbara. “It is really tough to gauge that a rock is in motion if all the rocks around it are also moving.”

Individual rocks remained in motion for anywhere from a few seconds to 16 minutes. In one event, the researchers observed rocks three football fields apart began moving simultaneously and traveled over 60 meters (200 feet) before stopping. Rocks often moved multiple times before reaching their final resting place. The researchers also observed rock-less trails formed by grounding ice panels — features that the Park Service had previously suspected were the result of tourists stealing rocks.

Rare events

“The last suspected movement was in 2006, and so rocks may move only about one millionth of the time,” said Lorenz. “There is also evidence that the frequency of rock movement, which seems to require cold nights to form ice, may have declined since the 1970s due to climate change.”

Richard and Jim Norris, and co-author Jib Ray of Interwoof, started studying the Racetrack’s moving rocks to solve the “public mystery” and set up the “Slithering Stones Research Initiative” to engage a wide circle of friends in the effort. They needed the help of volunteers who repeatedly visited the remote dry lake, quarried the rocks that were fitted with GPS, and maintained custom-made instruments. Lorenz and Brian Jackson of the Department of Physics at Boise State University started working on the phenomenon for their own reasons: They wanted to study dust devils and other desert weather features that might have analogs to processes happening on other planets.

“What is striking about prior research on the Racetrack is that almost everybody was doing the work not to gain fame or fortune, but because it is such a neat problem,” said Jim Norris.

So is the mystery of the sliding rocks finally solved?

“We documented five movement events in the two and a half months the pond existed and some involved hundreds of rocks,” says Richard Norris. “So we have seen that even in Death Valley, famous for its heat, floating ice is a powerful force in rock motion. But we have not seen the really big boys move out there….Does that work the same way?”

Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. (December 31, 1943 – October 12, 1997), known professionally as John Denver.

John was an American singer, songwriter, actor, activist, and humanitarian. He was one of the most popular acoustic artists of the 1970s and one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century. After traveling and living in numerous locations while growing up in his military family, Denver began his music career in folk music groups in the late 1960s. His greatest commercial success was as a solo singer, starting in the 1970s. Throughout his life, Denver recorded and released approximately 300 songs, about 200 of which he composed.

He performed primarily with an acoustic guitar and sang about his joy in nature, his enthusiasm for music, and his relationship trials. Denver’s music appeared on a variety of charts, including country and western, the Billboard Hot 100, and adult contemporary, in all earning him twelve gold and four platinum albums with his signature songs “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, “Annie’s Song”, “Rocky Mountain High”, and “Sunshine on My Shoulders”.

Doris Day and John Denver

Denver further starred in films and several notable television specials in the 1970s and 1980s. In the following decade, he continued to record, but also focused on calling attention to environmental issues, lent his vocal support to space exploration, and testified in front of Congress to protest against censorship in music. He was known for his love of the state of Colorado, which he sang about numerous times. He lived in Aspen, Colorado, for much of his life. He was named Poet Laureate of the state in 1974. The Colorado state legislature also adopted “Rocky Mountain High” as one of its state songs in 2007. Denver was an avid pilot, and died in a single fatality crash of his personal aircraft at the age of 53.

Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., was born in Roswell, New Mexico, to Erma Louise Swope and Lt. Col. Henry John Deutschendorf, Sr. an Air Force officer (who set three speed records in the B-58 Hustler bomber and earned a place in the Air Force Hall of Fame).

Henry Sr. was of German ancestry, and met and married his “Oklahoma Sweetheart”. Denver’s Irish Catholic and German maternal grandmother was the one who imbued Denver with his love of music. In his autobiography, Take Me Home, Denver described his life as the eldest son of a family shaped by a stern father who could not show his love for his children. He is also the nephew of singer Dave Deutschendorf of The New Christy Minstrels.

Because Denver’s father was in the military, the family moved often, making it difficult for Denver to make friends and fit in with people of his own age. Constantly being the new kid was agony for the introverted child, and he grew up always feeling as if he should be somewhere else, but never knowing where that “right” place was. While living in Tucson, Arizona, Denver was a member of the Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus for two years.

Denver was happy living in Tucson, but his father was transferred to Montgomery, Alabama, then in the midst of the Montgomery boycotts. The family later moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where Denver graduated from Arlington Heights High School. Attending high school in Fort Worth was a distressing experience for the disenfranchised Denver. In his third year of high school, he borrowed his father’s car and ran away to California to visit family friends and begin his music career. His father flew to California to bring him back, and Denver unhappily returned to finish high school.

At the age of 11, Denver received an acoustic guitar from his grandmother. He learned to play well enough to perform at local clubs by the time he was in college. He adopted the surname “Denver” after the capital of his favorite state, Colorado. He decided to change his name when Randy Sparks, founder of The New Christy Minstrels, suggested that “Deutschendorf” wouldn’t fit comfortably on a marquee.

Denver studied Architecture at Texas Tech University in Lubbock and sang in a folk-music group called “The Alpine Trio” while pursuing architecture studies. He was also a member of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity. Denver dropped out of the Texas Tech School of Engineering in 1963, and moved to Los Angeles, where he sang in folk clubs. In 1965, Denver joined the Chad Mitchell Trio, a folk group that had been renamed “The Mitchell Trio” prior to Chad Mitchell’s departure and before Denver’s arrival, and then “Denver, Boise, and Johnson” (John Denver, David Boise, and Michael Johnson).

In 1969, John Denver abandoned the band life to pursue a solo career and released his first album for RCA Records: Rhymes & Reasons. Two years prior, Denver had made a self-produced demo recording of some of the songs he played at his concerts. He included in the demo a song called “Babe I Hate to Go”, later renamed “Leaving on A Jet Plane”. Denver made several copies and gave them out as presents for Christmas. Producer Milt Okun, who produced records for the Mitchell Trio and the high-profile folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, had become Denver’s producer as well. Okun brought the unreleased “Jet Plane” song to Peter, Paul and Mary. Their version of the song hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Although RCA did not actively promote Rhymes & Reasons with a tour, Denver himself embarked on an impromptu supporting tour throughout the Midwest, stopping at towns and cities as the fashion took him, offering to play free concerts at local venues. When he was successful in persuading a school, college, American Legion Hall, or local coffee-house to let him play, he would spend a day or so distributing posters in the town and could usually be counted upon to show up at the local radio station, guitar in hand, offering himself for an interview.[citation needed] With his foot-in-the-door for authoring “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, he was often successful in gaining some valuable promotional airtime, usually featuring one or two songs performed live. Some venues would let him play for the “door”; others restricted him to selling copies of the album at intermission and after the show. After several months of this constant low-key touring schedule, however, he had sold enough albums to persuade RCA to take a chance on extending his recording contract. He had also built a sizable and solid fan base, many of whom remained loyal throughout his career.

Denver recorded two more albums in 1970, Take Me to Tomorrow and Whose Garden Was This, including a mix of songs he had written and cover versions of other artists’ compositions.

Career peak

His next album, Poems, Prayers, and Promises (released in 1971), was a breakthrough for him in the U.S., thanks in part to the single “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, which went to number 2 on the Billboard charts despite the first pressings of the track being distorted. Its success was due in part to the efforts of his new manager, future Hollywood producer Jerry Weintraub, who signed Denver in 1970. Weintraub insisted on a re-issue of the track and began a radio-airplay campaign that started in Denver, Colorado. Denver’s career flourished from then on, and he had a series of hits over the next four years. In 1972, Denver scored his first Top Ten album with Rocky Mountain High, with its title track reaching the Top Ten in 1973.

Between 1974 and 1975, Denver experienced an impressive chart dominance, with a string of four No.1 songs (“Sunshine on My Shoulders”, “Annie’s Song”, “Thank God I’m a Country Boy”, and “I’m Sorry”) and three No.1 albums (John Denver’s Greatest Hits, Back Home Again, and Windsong).

In the 1970s, Denver’s onstage appearance included long blond hair, embroidered shirts emblazoned with images commonly associated with the American West (created by designer & appliqué artist Anna Zapp), and “granny” glasses. His manager, Jerry Weintraub, insisted on a significant number of television appearances, including a series of half-hour shows in England, despite Denver’s protests at the time, “I’ve had no success in Britain… I mean none.”

Weintraub explained to Maureen Orth of Newsweek in December 1976, “I knew the critics would never go for John. I had to get him to the people.”

After appearing as a guest on many shows, Denver went on to host his own variety/music specials, including several concerts from Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Denver. His seasonal special, Rocky Mountain Christmas, was watched by more than 60 million people and was the highest-rated show for the ABC network at that time.[citation needed]

His live concert special, An Evening with John Denver, won the 1974–1975 Emmy for Outstanding Special, Comedy-Variety or Music. When Denver ended his business relationship because of Weintraub’s focus on other projects, Weintraub threw Denver out of his office and called him a Nazi.

Denver would later tell Arthur Tobier, when the latter transcribed his autobiography,[citation needed] “…I’d bend my principles to support something he wanted of me. And of course every time you bend your principles – whether because you don’t want to worry about it, or because you’re afraid to stand up for fear of what you might lose – you sell your soul to the devil.”

Denver was also a guest star on The Muppet Show, the beginning of the lifelong friendship between Denver and Jim Henson that spawned two television specials with The Muppets.

He also tried his hand at acting, appearing in the The Colorado Cattle Caper episode of the McCloud television movie on February 24, 1974, and starring in the 1977 film Oh, God! opposite George Burns.

Denver hosted the Grammy Awards five times in the 1970s and 1980s and guest-hosted The Tonight Show on multiple occasions. In 1975, Denver was awarded the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award.

At the ceremony, the outgoing Entertainer of the Year Charlie Rich presented the award to his successor, but in protest of what he considered the inappropriateness of Denver’s selection, Rich set fire to the envelope containing the official notification of the award. However, Denver’s music was defended by country singer Kathy Mattea, who told Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly, “A lot of people write him off as lightweight, but he articulated a kind of optimism, and he brought acoustic music to the forefront, bridging folk, pop, and country in a fresh way… People forget how huge he was worldwide.”

In 1977, Denver cofounded The Hunger Project with Werner Erhard and Robert W. Fuller. He served for many years and supported the organization until his death.

Denver was also appointed by President Jimmy Carter to serve on the President’s Commission on World Hunger, writing the song “I Want to Live” as its theme song. In 1979, Denver performed “Rhymes & Reasons” at the Music for UNICEF Concert. Royalties from the concert performances were donated to UNICEF.

His father taught him to fly in the mid-1970s, which led to a reconciliation between father and son.

T In 1980, Denver and his father, Lt. Col. “Dutch” Deutschendorf, co-hosted an award winning television special, “The Higher We Fly: the History of Flight”. It won the Osborn Award from the Aviation/Space Writers’ Association, and was honored by the Houston Film Festival.

Denver became outspoken in politics in the mid-1970s. He expressed his ecologic interests in the epic 1975 song “Calypso,” which is an ode to the exploration ship and team of environmental activist Jacques Cousteau. In 1976, he campaigned for Jimmy Carter, who became a close friend and ally. Denver was a supporter of the Democratic Party and of a number of charitable causes for the environmental movement, the homeless, the poor, the hungry, and the African AIDS crisis. He founded the charitable Windstar Foundation in 1976, to promote sustainable living. His dismay at the Chernobyl disaster led to precedent-setting concerts in parts of communist Asia and Europe.

During the 1980s, Denver was critical of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Administration, but he remained active in his campaign against hunger, for which Reagan awarded Denver the Presidential World Without Hunger Award in 1985.

Later years and humanitarian work

He had a few more U.S. Top 30 hits as the 1970s ended, but nothing to match his earlier success. He began to focus more on humanitarian and sustainability causes, focusing extensively on conservation projects. He made public expression of his acquaintances and friendships with ecological-design researchers such as Richard Buckminster Fuller (about whom he wrote and composed “What One Man Can Do”) and Amory Lovins, from whom he said he learned much. He also founded two environmental groups; the Windstar Foundation and Plant-It 2020 (originally Plant-It 2000).

Denver had a keen interest in solutions to world hunger. He visited Africa during the 1980s to witness first-hand the suffering caused by starvation and to work with African leaders toward solutions.

In 1983 and 1984, Denver hosted the annual Grammy Awards. In the 1983 finale, Denver was joined on stage by folk-music legend Joan Baez with whom he led an all-star version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Let The Sunshine In,” joined by such diverse musical icons as Jennifer Warnes, Donna Summer, and Rick James.

In 1984, Roone Arledge, president of ABC Sports, asked Denver to compose and sing the theme song for the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. Denver worked as both a performer and a skiing commentator. (Skiing was another avocation of Denver’s.) He had written and composed “The Gold and Beyond,” and he sang it for the Olympic Games athletes, as well as local venues including many schools.

In 1985, Denver asked to participate in the singing of “We Are the World,” but he was turned down. According to Ken Kragen (who helped to produce the song), the reason Denver was turned down was that many people felt his image would hurt the credibility of the song as a pop-rock anthem. “I didn’t agree” with this assessment, Kragen said, but reluctantly turned Denver down anyway.

For Earth Day 1990, Denver was the on-camera narrator of a well-received environmental TV program, In Partnership With Earth, with then–EPA Administrator William K. Reilly.

With Denver’s innate love of flying, he was naturally attracted to NASA and became dedicated to America’s work in outer space. He conscientiously worked to help bring into being the “Citizens in Space” program. Denver received the NASA Public Service Medal, in 1985 for “helping to increase awareness of space exploration by the peoples of the world,” an award usually restricted to spaceflight engineers and designers. Also in 1985, Denver passed NASA’s rigorous physical exam and was in line for a space flight, a finalist for the first citizen’s trip on the Space Shuttle in 1986. But he was not chosen. After the Challenger disaster with teacher Christa McAuliffe aboard, Denver dedicated his song “Flying for Me” to all astronauts, and he continued to support NASA.

Denver testified before the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee on the topic of censorship during a Parents Music Resource Center hearing in 1985. Denver also toured Russia in 1985. His 11 Soviet Union concerts were the first by any American artist in more than 10 years, and they marked a very important cultural exchange that culminated in an agreement to allow other western artists to perform there.

He returned two years later to perform at a benefit concert for the victims of the Chernobyl disaster. In October 1992, Denver undertook a multiple-city tour of the People’s Republic of China. He also released a greatest-hits CD, “Homegrown,” to raise money for homeless charities.

In 1994, he published his autobiography, Take Me Home, in which he candidly spoke of his marijuana, LSD, and cocaine use, his marital infidelities, and his history of domestic violence. In 1996, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

In early 1997, Denver filmed an episode for the Nature series, centering on the natural wonders that inspired many of his best-loved songs. The episode contains his last song, “Yellowstone, Coming Home,” which he composed while rafting along the Colorado River with his son and young daughter.

In the summer of 1997, Denver recorded a children’s train album for Sony Wonder, titled All Aboard! This was produced by long-time friend Roger Nichols. The album consisted of old-fashioned swing, big band, folk, bluegrass, and gospel styles of music woven into a theme of railroad songs. This album won a posthumous Best Musical Album For Children Grammy for Denver, which was his only Grammy.

Personal life

Denver’s first marriage was to Annie Martell of St. Peter, Minnesota. Their wedding was held at the Christ Chapel at Gustavus Adolphus College. Annie was the subject of his hit Annie’s Song, which he composed in only ten minutes while on a ski lift in 1974.

The couple lived in Edina, Minnesota, from 1968 to 1971. Following the success of “Rocky Mountain High”, Denver purchased a residence in Aspen, Colorado and owned one home in Aspen continuously until his death. He and Annie adopted a son, Zachary, and daughter, Anna Kate, who John would say were “meant to be” theirs.[4] John once said, “I’ll tell you the best thing about me. I’m some guy’s dad; I’m some little gal’s dad. When I die, Zachary John and Anna Kate’s father, boy, that’s enough for me to be remembered by. That’s more than enough.” Zachary was the subject of “A Baby Just Like You”, a song that included the line “Merry Christmas, little Zachary” and which he wrote for Frank Sinatra. Denver and Annie Martell divorced in 1982 and the ensuing property settlement caused Denver to become so enraged he nearly choked his ex-wife, then used a chainsaw to cut the marital bed in half. Martell continues to live in Aspen.

Denver married actress Cassandra Delaney in 1988, after a two-year courtship. Settling at Denver’s home in Aspen, the couple had a daughter, Jesse Belle. Denver and Delaney separated in 1991 and divorced in 1993. Of his second marriage, Denver would later recall that “before our short-lived marriage ended in divorce, she managed to make a fool of me from one end of the valley to the other”. In 1993, Denver pleaded guilty to a drunken driving charge, and was placed on probation.

In August 1994, while still on probation, he was again charged with misdemeanor driving under the influence after crashing his Porsche into a tree in Aspen. Though a jury trial in July 1997 resulted in a hung jury on the second DUI charge, prosecutors later decided to reopen the case, which was closed only after Denver’s accidental death in October 1997. In 1996, the FAA decided that Denver could no longer fly a plane due to medical disqualification for failure to abstain from alcohol, a condition that the FAA had imposed in October 1995 after his prior drunk-driving conviction.

Denver’s talent extended beyond music. He was a painter as well, but because of his limiting schedule, he pursued photography. He once said that “photography is a way to communicate a feeling”. Denver was an avid skier and golfer. His love of flying was secondary only to his love for music. He collected vintage biplanes, and in 1974, he bought a Learjet, which he used to fly himself to concerts. He also bought a Christen Eagle aerobatic plane, two Cessna 210 and in 1997, an experimental, amateur-built Rutan Long-EZ.

On October 12, 1997, Denver was killed at the age of 53, when his experimental Rutan Long-EZ plane, aircraft registration number N555JD, crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Pacific Grove, California, while making a series of touch-and-go landings at the nearby Monterey Peninsula Airport. The National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) accident ID is LAX98FA008. Denver was the only occupant of the aircraft.

In 2000, CBS presented the television movie Take Me Home: The John Denver Story loosely based on his memoirs, starring Chad Lowe. The New York Post observed, “An overachiever like John Denver couldn’t have been this boring.”

Denver’s music remains popular around the world. Previously unreleased and unnoticed recordings are now sought-after collectibles in pop, folk and country genres.[citation needed] Also in demand are copies of Denver’s many television appearances, especially his one-hour specials from the 1970s and his six-part series for Britain’s BBC, The John Denver Show. Despite strong interest in these programs, no sign of “official” release is evident for the vast majority of this material.[citation needed] An anthology musical featuring John Denver’s music, Back Home Again: A John Denver Holiday, premiered at the Rubicon Theatre Company in November 2006.

On March 12, 2007, the Colorado Senate passed a resolution to make Denver’s trademark 1972 hit “Rocky Mountain High” one of the state’s two official state songs, sharing duties with its predecessor, “Where the Columbines Grow”. The resolution passed 50–11 in the House, defeating an objection by Rep. Debbie Stafford (R-Aurora) that the song reflected drug use, most specifically the line, “friends around the campfire and everybody’s high”. Sen. Bob Hagedorn, the Aurora Democrat who sponsored the proposal, defended the song as nothing to do with drugs, but everything to do with sharing with friends the euphoria of experiencing the beauty of Colorado’s mountain vistas. Nancy Todd (D-Aurora) said that “John Denver to me is an icon of what Colorado is

On September 24, 2007, the California Friends of John Denver and The Windstar Foundation unveiled a bronze plaque near the spot where his plane went down near Pacific Grove. The site had been marked by a driftwood log carved (by Jeffrey Pine of Colorado) with the singer’s name, but fears that the memorial could be washed out to sea sparked the campaign for a more permanent memorial. Initially the Pacific Grove Council denied permission for the memorial, fearing the place would attract ghoulish curiosity from extreme fans. Permission was finally granted in 1999, but the project was put on hold at the request of the singer’s family. Eventually, over 100 friends and family attended the dedication of the plaque, which features a bas-relief of the singer’s face and lines from his song “Windsong”: “So welcome the wind and the wisdom she offers. Follow her summons when she calls again.”

To mark the 10th anniversary of Denver’s death, his family released a set of previously unreleased recordings of Denver’s 1985 concert performances in the Soviet Union. This two-CD set, John Denver – Live in the USSR, was produced by Denver’s friend Roger Nichols, and released by AAO Music. These digital recordings were made during 11 concerts, and then rediscovered in 2002. Included in this set is a previously unpublished rendition of “Annie’s Song” in Russian. The collection was released November 6, 2007.

On October 13, 2009, a DVD box set of previously unreleased concerts recorded throughout Denver’s career was released by Eagle Rock Entertainment. Around the World Live is a 5-disc DVD set featuring three complete live performances with full band from Australia in 1977, Japan in 1981, and England in 1986. These are complemented by a solo acoustic performance from Japan in 1984, and performances at Farm Aid from 1985, 1987 and 1990. The final disc has two-hour-long documentaries made by Denver.

On April 21, 2011, John Denver became the first inductee into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. A benefit concert was held at Broomfield’s 1stBank Center and hosted by Olivia Newton-John. Other performers participating in the event included Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Lee Ann Womack and John Oates. Both of his ex-wives were in attendance, and the award was presented to his three children.

The John Denver “Spirit” statue is a 2002 bronze sculpture statue that was financed by Denver’s fans.

PARAMOUNT CHANNEL : CARY GRANT

Wikipedia sources:

Cary Grant (born Archibald Alexander Leach; January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986) was an English stage and Hollywood film actor who became an American citizen in 1942. Known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor and “dashing good looks”, Grant is considered one of classic Hollywood‘s definitive leading men.

His mother had suffered from clinical depression since the death of a previous child. Her husband placed her in a mental institution and told his 9-year-old son only that she had gone away on a “long holiday”. Believing she was dead, Leach did not learn otherwise until he was 31 and discovered her alive in a care facility. When Leach was 10, his father abandoned him after remarrying and having a baby with his new young wife.

Leach was expelled from the Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol in 1918. After joining the “Bob Pender Stage Troupe”, Leach performed as a stilt walker and traveled with the group to the United States in 1920 at the age of 16 on the RMS Olympic, on a two-year tour of the country. He was processed at Ellis Island on July 28, 1920.

When the troupe returned to the UK, he decided to stay in the U.S. and continue his stage career. During this time, he became a part of thevaudeville world and toured with Parker, Rand, and Leach.

Still using his birth name, he performed on the stage at The Muny in St. Louis,Missouri, in such shows as Irene (1931), Music in May (1931), Nina Rosa (1931), Rio Rita (1931), Street Singer (1931), The Three Musketeers (1931), and Wonderful Night (1931). Leach’s experience on stage as a stilt walker, acrobat, juggler, and mime taught him “phenomenal physical grace and exquisite comic timing” and the value of teamwork, skills which would benefit him in Hollywood.

Leach became a naturalized United States citizen on June 26, 1942, at which time he also legally changed his name from “Archibald Alexander Leach” to “Cary Grant”.

After appearing in several musicals on Broadway under the name Archie Leach, Leach went to Hollywood in 1931. When told to change his name, he proposed “Cary Lockwood”, the name of the character he had played in the Broadway show Nikki, based upon the recent film The Last Flight.

He signed with Paramount Pictures, where studio bosses decided that the name “Cary” was acceptable but that “Lockwood” was too similar to another actor’s surname. Paramount gave their new actor a list of surnames to choose from, and he selected “Grant” because the initials C and G had already proved lucky for Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, two of Hollywood’s biggest film stars.

I’m No Angel was a tremendous financial success and, along with She Done Him Wrong, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, saved Paramount from bankruptcy. Paramount put Grant in a series of unsuccessful films until 1936, when he signed with Columbia Pictures. His first major comedy hit was when he was loaned to Hal Roach‘s studio for the 1937 Topper (which was distributed by MGM).

The Awful Truth (1937) was a pivotal film in Grant’s career, establishing for him a screen persona as a sophisticated light comedy leading man. As Grant later wrote, “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.” Grant is said to have based his characterization in The Awful Truth on the mannerisms and intonations of the film’s director, Leo McCarey, whom he resembled physically. As writer/director Peter Bogdanovich noted, “After The Awful Truth, when it came to light comedy, there was Cary Grant and then everyone else was an also-ran.”

Grant remained one of Hollywood’s top box-office attractions for almost 30 years. Howard Hawks said that Grant was “so far the best that there isn’t anybody to be compared to him”.[15]David Thomson called him “the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema“.

Grant was a favorite of Hitchcock, who called him “the only actor I ever loved in my whole life”.

Paul Newman was cast instead, oppositeJulie Andrews. Producers Broccoli and Saltzman originally sought Cary Grant for the role of James Bond in Dr. No but discarded the idea as Grant would be committed to only one feature film and the producers decided to go after someone who could be part of a franchise.

Grant was the first actor to “go independent” by not renewing his studio contract, effectively leaving the studio system, which almost completely controlled what an actor could or could not do. In this way, Grant was able to control every aspect of his career, at the risk of not working because no particular studio had an interest in his career long term.

He decided which films he was going to appear in, often had personal choice of directors and co-stars, and at times even negotiated a share of the gross revenue, something uncommon at the time. Grant received more than $700,000 for his 10% of the gross for To Catch a Thief while Hitchcock received less than $50,000 for directing and producing it.

Grant poked fun at himself with statements such as “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant—even I want to be Cary Grant”, and in ad-lib lines—such as in the film His Girl Friday, saying, “I never had so much fun since Archie Leach died”. In Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), a gravestone is seen bearing the name Archie Leach. According to a famous story now believed to be apocryphal, after seeing a telegram from a magazine editor to his agent asking “How old Cary Grant?” Grant reportedly responded with “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?

Cary Grant retired from the screen at 62 when his daughter Jennifer was born, in order to focus on bringing her up and to provide a sense of permanency and stability in her life.

While bringing up his daughter, he archived artifacts of her childhood and adolescence in a bank-quality room-sized vault he had installed in the house.

His daughter attributed this meticulous collection to the fact that artifacts of his own childhood had been destroyed during the Luftwaffe’s bombing of Bristol in the Second World War (an event that also claimed the lives of his uncle, aunt, and cousin as well as the cousin’s husband and grandson), and he may have wanted to prevent her from experiencing a similar loss.

Although Grant had retired from the screen, he remained active.

CARY GRANT – MARTIN LANDAU

In the late 1960s, he accepted a position on the board of directors at Fabergé. By all accounts this position was not honorary, as some had assumed; Grant regularly attended meetings and his mere appearance at a product launch would almost certainly guarantee its success. The position also permitted use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother, Dyan Cannon, was working.

He later joined the boards of Hollywood Park, the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle, Hollywood, California), Western Airlines (now Delta Air Lines), andMGM.

He was a keen motoring enthusiast and, like many other Hollywood stars of the era, owned many notable cars. One of the first he owned was a 1929 Cadillac Cabriolet. His love of Cadillacs never waned and he later purchased a Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. Other cars that he owned included an MG Magnette and a Sunbeam Alpine series one roadster.

In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the United States in a one-man show, A Conversation with Cary Grant, in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. Grant was preparing for a performance at the Adler Theatre in Davenport, Iowa, on the afternoon of November 29, 1986, when he sustained a cerebral hemorrhage (he had previously suffered a stroke in October 1984). His wife did not know what was going on and she went to a local pharmacy to get aspirin. He died at 11:22 p.m. in St. Luke’s Hospital at the age of 82.

The bulk of his estate, worth millions of dollars, went to his fifth wife, Barbara Harris, and his daughter, Jennifer Grant

In 2001, a statue of Grant was erected in Millennium Square, a regenerated area next to Bristol Harbour in his city of birth, Bristol.

In November 2005, Grant came in first in the “The 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time” list by Premiere magazine. Richard Schickel, the film critic, said about Grant: “He’s the best star actor there ever was in the movies.